HBWMA -Chapter 191 Survival Manual for Illegitimate Children in the Cracks

The weight on her wrist instantly threw Shen Mianzhi off balance.

A damp, salty wind drifted across the calm water surface.

She froze. When she turned back, the dull, icy depths of her eyes were tinted with the reflected glow of distant shore lights.

“…Why is it you?” she murmured.

Ever since that night banquet three years ago, the relationship between Jiang Huashan, Fu Sui’er, and Shen Mianzhi had dropped to freezing point. Especially Fu Sui’er—she hadn’t once shown a good face in all these three years. Shen Jiao had scolded Fu Sui’er countless times for it, but it was all in vain.

Shen Mianzhi even began to wonder if Jiang Huashan in front of her was just another hallucination.

Jiang Huashan let go, shaking the bag of medicine in her hand. “Which one do you want?” she asked again.

Shen Mianzhi stared at the medicine in her hand for a long moment before asking, “Why do you have medicine?”

“Bought it at the hospital,” Jiang Huashan replied.

Shen Mianzhi frowned slightly.

Seeing that she didn’t believe her, Jiang Huashan curved her lips into a faint, mocking smile. “What? Only you are allowed to have mental illness, but no one else is?”

Shen Mianzhi turned her head away, staring at the vast water surface. “Were you also at the hospital just now? Did you see me? So you think I’m ridiculous too? Yes… desperately begging others to believe you’re sick does sound pretty laughable.”

Jiang Huashan glanced at the label above her head and shook her head. “No. I literally mean what I said. Don’t overinterpret it.”

Shen Mianzhi hesitated and looked back at her.

The lake surface shimmered with rippling reflections, their silhouettes swaying in the water.

After a long silence, Shen Mianzhi lowered her gaze, a trace of loneliness in her eyes. “I don’t understand.”

Jiang Huashan pressed the medicine into her hands. “It doesn’t matter. One day, you’ll understand.”

Shen Mianzhi looked at the medicine in her hands, her emotions complicated. “Do you believe me?” What she really wanted to ask was whether Jiang Huashan believed she wasn’t lying—or believed she was truly mentally ill. But she decided it wasn’t worth clarifying, because either answer… felt warm to her right now.

“I do,” Jiang Huashan said. “Otherwise why would I bring you medicine?”

Shen Mianzhi sniffled, then took a deep breath and looked up. “You didn’t think I was going to do something stupid just now, did you? I actually just—”

She stopped halfway.

Because she didn’t know how to explain it.

More and more, she felt that the world was just a giant makeshift stage—some people performed grandly, others ended their roles carelessly—and she was just one of many puppets.

Privately, she labeled these moments of loss of control as “rules.” She believed some kind of “rules” were controlling her.

But…

Who would believe something so absurd? Even she didn’t believe it—otherwise she wouldn’t keep trying again and again to test whether she was mentally ill. Because if these “rules” were the truth of the world, then even the people she loved might be puppets. That was true despair. So deep down, Shen Mianzhi preferred to believe she was sick.

“You just want to resist this world,” Jiang Huashan said, finishing her thought for her.

Shen Mianzhi’s pupils contracted. Her gaze surged violently like a storm sweeping through.

She rarely lost control of her emotions like this—the shock was simply too great.

Jiang Huashan, however, remained calm.

When she first awakened to her own awareness, she had also spent every day suspecting she was insane. Especially after the “Book Spirit” appeared, her entire worldview collapsed.

Everything she loved, hated, argued over, lingered on, experienced—it was all just a two-dimensional slice. At that time, she was already a mentally mature adult, yet learning the truth of the world still plunged her into a long depression.

Jiang Huashan deduced that Shen Mianzhi might have noticed the world’s abnormalities even earlier than the age of twelve. Twelve was the starting timeline of her current life—and it had been given to Shen Mianzhi as well.

She also remembered that in a previous life, at Shen Mianzhi’s funeral, her grandfather recalled many things from her childhood, repeatedly describing her as “extremely intelligent,” even calling her something like “possessing the wisdom of a hundred dragons.”

In other words, the script had given Shen Mianzhi an extraordinary intelligence—but in order to restrain it, it also burdened her with two mountains: “love-brain” tendencies and excessive “saint-like compassion.”

Under such targeting, yet still managing to awaken herself… she was absolutely an underestimated background character in this scripted world.

However, the current situation was not optimistic.

First, she was too young—she might not be able to bear the truth of this world.

Second, genius often brings injury; the more intelligent one is, the easier it is to see the cruelty of reality. Without a proper guide, she might spend her entire life in inner depletion.

For example: both realizing they were controlled by the script—Jiang Huashan chose to destroy the script world together with herself, while Shen Mianzhi chose to hurt herself instead.

The two of them stared at each other in silence for a full three minutes.

No one spoke.

The damp, salty night wind swept across the water again and again. In the end, Jiang Huashan couldn’t stand it anymore and shivered.

“Alright, I’ve delivered the medicine. Think about the rest yourself. It’s too cold—I’m leaving.”

She waved and turned toward the riverbank.

The grass on both sides of the embankment bent under the wind. Jiang Huashan walked with her head slightly raised, feeling the wind brush against her face. Shen Mianzhi still stood by the water, watching her.

From above the embankment, the scene looked like a dark abstract painting—the overpass a crouching beast, the river a bottomless abyss. Against it all, Shen Mianzhi looked small and insignificant.

Back on the ring road, Jiang Huashan suddenly realized a problem: it was hard to get a taxi at the foot of the hill. Looks like she’d have to call someone.

Just then, a bright beam suddenly swept toward her. The white glare was so intense it nearly caused temporary blindness. She covered her eyes and turned away—before she could react, a black Maybach roared past her.

“!”

That…?

Well, speak of the devil.

Jiang Huashan quickly waved. “Shen Gu—”

Whoosh—

As if deliberately opposing her, the black car suddenly accelerated and vanished into the night.

“…Damn green tea,” she muttered, rubbing her eyes, preparing to call for a ride again.

Beep—

At that moment, a light appeared again at the end of the mountain road. The black car had returned, switching from high beams to low beams.

It slowed down, stopping politely half a meter away from her like a well-mannered gentleman.

Jiang Huashan immediately put away her phone and knocked on the window.

The glass slowly lowered.

Inside, the person tilted his head slightly. Light gathered in his eyes, his eyelids slightly raised.

“……”

So showy.

Jiang Huashan crouched down, smiling. “What a coincidence. Since we’ve run into each other, give me a ride?”

Shen Guiling glanced at her and pressed the remote by the side of the seat. “Get in.”

Jiang Huashan nodded, walked around the car, opened the door, and got in.

Lei Xing was in the driver’s seat and explained with some apology, “Miss Jiang, I’m really sorry. I drove off too quickly just now and didn’t notice you. If it weren’t for Young Master A-Ling reminding me, I would’ve missed you.”

Jiang Huashan looked at Shen Guiling and smiled faintly. “It’s fine, Steward Lei.”

Lei Xing glanced at Shen Guiling again, nodded slightly, then turned back and focused on driving.

The car fell quiet.

The mountain road circling the city was lined with streetlights. A trail of starlike lights stretched all the way to the summit. Warm orange glow poured through the windows, drifting across their faces like shifting shadows in a moving lantern show.

She and Shen Guiling were really strange.

In the first two years, Jiang Huashan often provoked him. But Shen Guiling’s emotional stability was absurdly high—more stable than a lazy little thing sunbathing in a pond. No matter how sharp her provocations were, they landed on him like a tickle. Sometimes even Jiang Huashan had to admit that it was no wonder this “social butterfly” could carve out an outrageous storyline in a ruthless, scheming world of elites. He was the most composed child she had ever met—far more composed than Shen Lanxi.

Shen Lanxi only looked rigid, but he was actually easy to provoke. Jiang Huashan could make him explode in minutes now. But Shen Guiling was different—especially after he went to American Alliance High School as an exchange student half a year ago. He had become even harder to read, like he had entered some kind of enlightened state, rarely showing any emotions at all.

“Tch, how does he do it? Smiling like that every day? Who exactly is this personality even for?” she muttered.

“?”

Shen Guiling raised an eyebrow and turned to look at her.

Their eyes met.

Jiang Huashan suddenly froze—oh no. She had been thinking too deeply and accidentally said it out loud.

To cover it up, she improvised quickly, “Shen Guiling, I heard the Liu family’s second young lady and the sickly young master of the Chai family fought in the street because of you? The gates of American Alliance High School were even locked down. Did you come back early because of them?”

Shen Guiling rested his cheek on one hand and looked at her. “No.”

“Then why did you come back?” Jiang Huashan continued, “You were number one big shot at American Alliance High. Now you come back to Yucai and drop to third place. Even Shen Lanxi and Zhou Yanheng don’t bother with interviews, but you’re throwing yourself at them. What’s the point?”

As expected—provocation again.

Shen Guiling lifted his eyelids lazily. “Manual for Surviving as an Illegitimate Son in the Cracks.”

“!”

Last year, out of boredom, Jiang Huashan had reorganized the entire Shen family relationship map, trying to see if she could uncover even the smallest clues about a traitor.

Because the network was so complicated, she turned her analysis into rough comic sketches.

The first case she reviewed was Shen Guiling. Based on known information, she divided his “rise” into three stages:
First stage—surviving in the cracks as an illegitimate son.
Second stage—being driven abroad despite talent.
Third stage—enduring humiliation and then returning as a king.

To avoid missing details, she titled the first stage Manual for Surviving as an Illegitimate Son in the Cracks, recording his daily suppression.

The comic’s protagonist, “Shen Guiling,” was drawn as a chibi character with a turtle shell on his back and a grinning mask on his face. His daily life consisted of being bullied in various ways.

For example: at a family BBQ, “Turtle Guiling” stood by the grill serving food for everyone, working like a servant turtle.

For example: after Yao Ge expressed willingness to reform and accept him, Shen Guiling let her interfere with him under the guise of “education,” becoming a wronged turtle.

For another example: on a school graduation trip, Guan He and a group of rich heirs locked him and several girls in a room for a whole night under the excuse of a game. The next day, Guan He brought people to “inspect the scene,” only to find that Shen Guiling had spent the entire night playing staring contests with five girls—at which point he evolved into a “Ninja Turtle.”

Every incident was carefully drawn in comic-strip form.

At the end, Jiang Huashan even added her conclusion: “Survival of the illegitimate son depends entirely on endurance.” The illustration showed chibi “Turtle Guiling” crying inside his shell.

Originally, she planned to draw the part where he was expelled too—but the comic suddenly disappeared.

That day, Shen Guiling was the one who drove her home. After returning to school, she realized she had left her drawing board behind. When she went back to retrieve it, the draft was gone. At first she didn’t care, thinking she had misplaced it in the studio. But when she searched her room and still couldn’t find it, she panicked and rushed straight to Bamboo Garden.

It just so happened that when she stormed into Shen Guiling’s bedroom, he had just finished showering, wearing only a damp bathrobe. Steward Lei tried to stop her but failed and followed her in.

Jiang Huashan accused him of stealing her sketchbook. Shen Guiling denied it. It escalated into her searching the room—even flipping his bed—but she still couldn’t find Manual for Surviving as an Illegitimate Son in the Cracks.

In the end, it became an unsolved mystery, and the consequence was that Jiang Huashan never dared to use comics as a mind-mapping tool again.

Now, Shen Guiling bringing it up again was basically a frontal attack.

Jiang Huashan’s temper flared instantly. She grabbed his tie. “Thief! So it really was you!!”

Shen Guiling remained calm. “I picked it up.”

“Bull—! I warn you, that’s my life’s work. Give it back!”

Shen Guiling raised an eyebrow. “Your life’s work? Your life’s work is drawing me getting bullied?”

“Who’s drawing you?!” she was about to retort when she suddenly changed her tone completely. “Fine. Since you like it, keep it. Don’t misunderstand—I just enjoy watching you suffer. The more pitiful you are, the happier I am.”

That’s it. She couldn’t let him know she had been analyzing him.

“You’re analyzing me?”

“?”

Jiang Huashan froze for a second and looked up. What the hell—how did he guess that so accurately? Did she have it written on her forehead?

“Who… who’s analyzing you? Why don’t you just say I’m secretly in love with you instead?”

“!”

What?! Miss Jiang is secretly in love with Young Master A-Ling?!

Steward Lei’s hand shook. The car suddenly swerved and braked hard.

Jiang Huashan was still gripping Shen Guiling’s tie. With the sudden inertia, Shen Guiling was pulled forward off his seat and lunged toward her.

In that split second between choosing to kiss or to pin, he chose neither—he chose face-pressing.

One knee between her legs on the seat, one hand on the backrest, the other braced against the window. His chest pressed firmly against her face.

“Mm-mmph…”

“……”

Shen Guiling looked down. A fluffy head was struggling between his chest and the seat.

“Are you two alright, Young Master A-Ling?” Steward Lei asked anxiously after regaining control.

Shen Guiling leaned back slightly, releasing her head.

“We’re fine.”

“Fine?” Jiang Huashan immediately shot up, locking her legs around his knees.

Shen Guiling’s expression changed slightly as he tried to pull back—but she hugged his waist directly and executed a judo-style throw.

And it didn’t end there. As he fell, she grabbed a pillow and pounced on top of him.

“Die!!”